Alan Keyes
In the last stage of corruption, is resistance possible?
America's founders foresaw the danger of elitist tyranny
By Alan Keyes
They especially complain about the fact that – though they keep voting for Republicans to represent them in elective office, giving them majorities in both Houses of Congress and a solid majority of state governorships and legislative bodies – they keep getting results that don't represent them.
"Why do they keep betraying us?" is the common theme.
"Why do you keep voting for them?" is my consistent answer.
"Because we don't have any choice," comes the refrain. "If we vote for anyone else, the Democrats will win."
So let's see: Right now the Democrats get what they want with little real GOP opposition and a fair amount of GOP complicity. Meanwhile, conservatives waste themselves and their resources on what consistently proves to be a combination of false promises and false hopes.
If conservatives turn away from the GOP, the Democrats will get what they supposedly want. The GOP will falter. But conservatives will be freed to devote themselves and their resources to organizing strong, effective grassroots opposition. In fact, they were successfully doing so in the independent tea-party movement, before the GOP quislings successfully inveigled them into "working from within" the elitist faction's sham party system.
As things stand, the victory of either of the elitist faction's sham parties leaves America's liberty on the path to self-destruction, with no real or effective opposition. If conservatives withdraw from the sham, America's liberty will, for a time, still be on the path to self-destruction. But each step along the way will feed the growth and effectiveness of the grassroots movement that rejects that path, because the GOP will no longer be allowed to dissipate its energy uselessly.
America's founders anticipated the course of tyrannical elitist-faction ambition that now threatens the final overthrow of the constitutional sovereignty of the American people. In Federalist 63, Hamilton wrote of the possibility that an elitist faction body might "gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and finally transform it into a tyrannical aristocracy." Listing the obstacles to such a result, provided for in the Constitution as it read when first ratified, he observed that the elite bodies must first be corrupted, then the representative body of the people, and finally the people themselves.
Surveying the constitutional changes adopted, by hook or crook, in the course of the 20th century, it appears as if some hidden hand carefully crafted the precise sequence of events Hamilton describes. The good offices of the state legislatures, as guardians of the sovereignty of the people, were not just corrupted, they were entirely eliminated by the 17th Amendment. Thanks to that change, the influence of elitist corporate money and media power came to dominate in the election of U.S. senators. This moved the U.S. Senate into the orbit of elitist national and international corporate interests, beginning especially with the financial interests that effectively nationalized America's banks and the control of our national income and capital formation.
The corruption of the U.S. House of Representatives and the corruption of the people at large go hand-in-hand. As with the U.S. Senate, elitist faction money and media powers used the party organizations to insinuate their control of key leaders in the "People's House" of Congress. As for the people at large, the power of the entertainment media, including so-called news and information programs, chiseled away at the foundational moral character of the American people, replacing the individual self-discipline and group initiative that once predominated on account of the influence of America's frontier culture, with a culture of consumerism, in which individual self-seeking and group self-indulgence predominate.
This change worked to redefine the nation's political ethos. Under the influence of the frontier spirit, elections had been a search for representation. That search required the initiative and independence of grassroots people and their associations. For the people must themselves present the will they want another to represent. Under the influence of the consumerist mentality, unfortunately, elections have become a search for someone to "get the goods." But, inevitably, representatives chosen for that purpose may represent, in and of themselves, the self-seeking, self-indulgent character of the people. Before long, such characters realize that they can better "get the goods" for themselves by convincing people to value the goods offered by the elitist faction power that distribute money and media attention with the aim of first manipulating and then dominating the people.
As a result of this change in character, elected officials are no longer disposed to represent the people. Instead, they are eager to represent the elitist forces seeking to tyrannize over the people.
Elections cease to be occasions for candidates to prove themselves by demonstrating their ability to articulate the goodwill of the people. They become instead the stage on which individual power seekers audition for the elitist faction "sugar daddies" they are eager to serve.
Such candidates seek above all to convince the elitist powers that they will be the most effectively deceitful manipulators, beguilers, and overseers of the people. The pointlessly personal bouts of narcissistic combat now on display as the first stage of the elitist faction's sham partisan election cycle nicely illustrate this point. It is a spectacle in which the serious judgment of the people counts for no more than the applause or boos of children at a circus.
So, is the final victory of the politics of elitist tyranny now inevitable? Or is there a way for the people who complain against the growing signs of that victory to use and focus their political energy to defeat it?
America's founders foresaw the danger of elitist tyranny. But once it progressed to the ultimate stage, in which the people themselves are the targets of corruption, did the founders foresee the strategy that would defeat it? I think they did. But I wonder whether, among the conservatives plaintively protesting the GOP's betrayal of their goodwill, are there left good characters enough to reclaim the initiative required to implement it?
October 12, 2015
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In previous generations, Americans had the sense to understand that if you vote for people who don't represent you, you get a government that doesn't represent you. That's self-evident. – Alan Keyes, LoyalToLiberty post, Sept. 23, 2012
They especially complain about the fact that – though they keep voting for Republicans to represent them in elective office, giving them majorities in both Houses of Congress and a solid majority of state governorships and legislative bodies – they keep getting results that don't represent them.
"Why do they keep betraying us?" is the common theme.
"Why do you keep voting for them?" is my consistent answer.
"Because we don't have any choice," comes the refrain. "If we vote for anyone else, the Democrats will win."
So let's see: Right now the Democrats get what they want with little real GOP opposition and a fair amount of GOP complicity. Meanwhile, conservatives waste themselves and their resources on what consistently proves to be a combination of false promises and false hopes.
If conservatives turn away from the GOP, the Democrats will get what they supposedly want. The GOP will falter. But conservatives will be freed to devote themselves and their resources to organizing strong, effective grassroots opposition. In fact, they were successfully doing so in the independent tea-party movement, before the GOP quislings successfully inveigled them into "working from within" the elitist faction's sham party system.
As things stand, the victory of either of the elitist faction's sham parties leaves America's liberty on the path to self-destruction, with no real or effective opposition. If conservatives withdraw from the sham, America's liberty will, for a time, still be on the path to self-destruction. But each step along the way will feed the growth and effectiveness of the grassroots movement that rejects that path, because the GOP will no longer be allowed to dissipate its energy uselessly.
America's founders anticipated the course of tyrannical elitist-faction ambition that now threatens the final overthrow of the constitutional sovereignty of the American people. In Federalist 63, Hamilton wrote of the possibility that an elitist faction body might "gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and finally transform it into a tyrannical aristocracy." Listing the obstacles to such a result, provided for in the Constitution as it read when first ratified, he observed that the elite bodies must first be corrupted, then the representative body of the people, and finally the people themselves.
Surveying the constitutional changes adopted, by hook or crook, in the course of the 20th century, it appears as if some hidden hand carefully crafted the precise sequence of events Hamilton describes. The good offices of the state legislatures, as guardians of the sovereignty of the people, were not just corrupted, they were entirely eliminated by the 17th Amendment. Thanks to that change, the influence of elitist corporate money and media power came to dominate in the election of U.S. senators. This moved the U.S. Senate into the orbit of elitist national and international corporate interests, beginning especially with the financial interests that effectively nationalized America's banks and the control of our national income and capital formation.
The corruption of the U.S. House of Representatives and the corruption of the people at large go hand-in-hand. As with the U.S. Senate, elitist faction money and media powers used the party organizations to insinuate their control of key leaders in the "People's House" of Congress. As for the people at large, the power of the entertainment media, including so-called news and information programs, chiseled away at the foundational moral character of the American people, replacing the individual self-discipline and group initiative that once predominated on account of the influence of America's frontier culture, with a culture of consumerism, in which individual self-seeking and group self-indulgence predominate.
This change worked to redefine the nation's political ethos. Under the influence of the frontier spirit, elections had been a search for representation. That search required the initiative and independence of grassroots people and their associations. For the people must themselves present the will they want another to represent. Under the influence of the consumerist mentality, unfortunately, elections have become a search for someone to "get the goods." But, inevitably, representatives chosen for that purpose may represent, in and of themselves, the self-seeking, self-indulgent character of the people. Before long, such characters realize that they can better "get the goods" for themselves by convincing people to value the goods offered by the elitist faction power that distribute money and media attention with the aim of first manipulating and then dominating the people.
As a result of this change in character, elected officials are no longer disposed to represent the people. Instead, they are eager to represent the elitist forces seeking to tyrannize over the people.
Elections cease to be occasions for candidates to prove themselves by demonstrating their ability to articulate the goodwill of the people. They become instead the stage on which individual power seekers audition for the elitist faction "sugar daddies" they are eager to serve.
Such candidates seek above all to convince the elitist powers that they will be the most effectively deceitful manipulators, beguilers, and overseers of the people. The pointlessly personal bouts of narcissistic combat now on display as the first stage of the elitist faction's sham partisan election cycle nicely illustrate this point. It is a spectacle in which the serious judgment of the people counts for no more than the applause or boos of children at a circus.
So, is the final victory of the politics of elitist tyranny now inevitable? Or is there a way for the people who complain against the growing signs of that victory to use and focus their political energy to defeat it?
America's founders foresaw the danger of elitist tyranny. But once it progressed to the ultimate stage, in which the people themselves are the targets of corruption, did the founders foresee the strategy that would defeat it? I think they did. But I wonder whether, among the conservatives plaintively protesting the GOP's betrayal of their goodwill, are there left good characters enough to reclaim the initiative required to implement it?
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
